First Love

CHAPTER XI

On the evening of the same day the usual guests were assembled
at the Zasyekins’. I was among them.

The conversation turned on Meidanov’s poem. Zina´da
expressed genuine admiration of it. ‘But do you know
what?’ she said to him. ‘If I were a poet, I would
choose quite different subjects. Perhaps it’s all nonsense,
but strange ideas sometimes come into my head, especially when
I’m not asleep in the early morning, when the sky begins to
turn rosy and grey both at once. I would, for instance ... You
won’t laugh at me?’

‘No, no!’ we all cried, with one voice.

‘I would describe,’ she went on, folding her arms
across her bosom and looking away, ‘a whole company of young
girls at night in a great boat, on a silent river. The moon is
shining, and they are all in white, and wearing garlands of white
flowers, and singing, you know, something in the nature of a
hymn.’

‘I see—I see; go on,’ Meidanov commented with
dreamy significance.

‘All of a sudden, loud clamour, laughter, torches,
tambourines on the bank.... It’s a troop of Bacchantes
dancing with songs and cries. It’s your business to make a
picture of it, Mr. Poet;... only I should like the torches to be
red and to smoke a great deal, and the Bacchantes’ eyes to
gleam under their wreaths, and the wreaths to be dusky. Don’t
forget the tiger-skins, too, and goblets and gold—lots of
gold....’

‘Where ought the gold to be?’ asked Meidanov,
tossing back his sleek hair and distending his nostrils.

‘Where? on their shoulders and arms and
legs—everywhere. They say in ancient times women wore gold
rings on their ankles. The Bacchantes call the girls in the boat to
them. The girls have ceased singing their hymn—they cannot go
on with it, but they do not stir, the river carries them to the
bank. And suddenly one of them slowly rises.... This you must
describe nicely: how she slowly gets up in the moonlight, and how
her companions are afraid.... She steps over the edge of the boat,
the Bacchantes surround her, whirl her away into night and
darkness.... Here put in smoke in clouds and everything in
confusion. There is nothing but the sound of their shrill cry, and
her wreath left lying on the bank.’

Zina´da ceased. (‘Oh! she is in love!’ I thought
again.)

‘And is that all?’ asked Meidanov.

‘That’s all.’

‘That can’t be the subject of a whole poem,’
he observed pompously, ‘but I will make use of your idea for
a lyrical fragment.’

‘Hugo is a writer of the first class,’ replied
Meidanov; ‘and my friend, Tonkosheev, in his Spanish romance,
El Trovador ...’

‘Ah! is that the book with the question-marks turned
upside down?’ Zina´da interrupted.

‘Yes. That’s the custom with the Spanish. I was
about to observe that Tonkosheev ...’

‘Come! you’re going to argue about classicism and
romanticism again,’ Zina´da interrupted him a second
time.’ We’d much better play ...

‘Forfeits?’ put in Lushin.

‘No, forfeits are a bore; at comparisons.’ (This
game Zina´da had invented herself. Some object was mentioned, every
one tried to compare it with something, and the one who chose the
best comparison got a prize.)

She went up to the window. The sun was just setting; high up in
the sky were large red clouds.

‘What are those clouds like?’ questioned Zina´da;
and without waiting for our answer, she said, ‘I think they
are like the purple sails on the golden ship of Cleopatra, when she
sailed to meet Antony. Do you remember, Meidanov, you were telling
me about it not long ago?’

All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, opined that the
clouds recalled nothing so much as those sails, and that not one of
us could discover a better comparison.

‘And how old was Antony then?’ inquired Zina´da.

‘A young man, no doubt,’ observed Malevsky.

‘Yes, a young man,’ Meidanov chimed in in
confirmation.

‘Excuse me,’ cried Lushin, ‘he was over
forty.’

‘Over forty,’ repeated Zina´da, giving him a rapid
glance....

I soon went home. ‘She is in love,’ my lips
unconsciously repeated.... ‘But with whom?’